If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thought that his spectacular drone strike on Russian air bases would yield a Kremlin compromise, Russia issued its blunt response in black and white: no chance.
After waiting for weeks for Moscow to present its ceasefire demands in writing, the West finally got them Monday with a memorandum issued by Russian envoys in Istanbul.
Few analysts really believed that Ukraine’s “Spiderweb” plot would gain immediate concessions from a stubborn, bloody-minded President Vladimir Putin. And so it was.
The memorandum, published in full by the Russian state news agency Tass, was less of a peace plan and more a demand for Ukraine to surrender, defang its military and become a vassal of Moscow.
The conditions, which included Ukraine withdrawing from vast swaths of territory and fulfilling a list of Russian-set conditions, put down for the first time on paper what Ukraine and its allies have known since the beginning of this three-year-long war — that Putin and his forces “are going to have to kill their way out of this war,” a Western official with knowledge of the talks told NBC News on Tuesday, predicting “more violence.”
The handing over by the Russian delegation of such a maximalist list of demands illustrated that “Russia does not negotiate — except the terms of its opposition’s surrender,” said James Nixey, a London-based consultant specializing on Russia and the former Soviet republics.
Putin’s Kremlin is “not fighting a war in Ukraine because of some vague ambition; it’s doing it because it thinks that it is God given right,” he added, and “as extraordinary move from the Ukrainians as this was,” Russia is unlikely to yield until it is “crippled economically and humbled militarily” — neither of which have happened.
Under the 12-point plan, Russia would control Crimea, the southern peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014, as well as the eastern territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. This is where most of the war has been fought since Russia’s invasion.
Russia only controls parts of these areas and so is calling for Ukrainian forces to withdraw — another colossal loss of territory for the country that was invaded three years ago.
The document calls for Ukraine to downsize its army, accept “neutral” status between Russia and the West, recognize Russian as an official language, and ban the “glorification or promotion of Nazism.”
For many in the West, this is little more than a road map for Ukraine to be swallowed back up by Russia’s sphere of influence, as it was during the Soviet era and then under Kremlin-compliant leaders such as Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014.
Its publication also suggests that Western intelligence agencies are correct in their belief that Putin is not interested in compromise. The memorandum codifies what Putin has been saying all along — that the “root causes” of the war are NATO’s eastward expansion and fomenting Nazism in Ukraine.
The memorandum is “aimed at getting rid of the root causes of this conflict,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Tuesday. “It would be wrong to expect some immediate decisions and a breakthrough here,” he said, adding that “we await the reaction to the memorandum” from Ukraine.
Ukraine and its Western supporters say Russian claims of Nazism are absurd, particularly when the country is governed by Zelenskyy, who is Jewish. NATO and its backers contend that the alliance has only grown because former Soviet republics, such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, have voted to join in the hope of gaining protection from Russia.
Not only is Ukraine unlikely to accept Russia’s absolutist terms, scholars previously interviewed by NBC News believe that Russia knows they won’t. Many see the peace talks as a charade that both sides know will fail, only prolonged to avoid the ire and impatience of President Donald Trump.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev — always a hawkish voice — was unabashed in how he views these discussions at the lavish Ottoman-era Çırağan Palace.
“The negotiations in Istanbul are not needed for a compromise peace on unrealistic conditions invented by someone else,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on the messaging app Telegram. Rather, he said, the aim was “quick victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi government.” He said this goal was “the point of the Russian memorandum, which was published yesterday.”
All the while, Russia, unlike Ukraine’s attacks on military targets, continues to bombard Ukrainian civilians. On Tuesday, it “brutally attacked” the embattled city of Sumy, Zelenskyy said, killing at least three people and injuring “many” more.
With both sides still diametrically opposed, Trump’s next move could prove pivotal.
Having once promised to end the war in 24 hours, he has become so frustrated with the intractable reality that he has threatened to walk away.
There are hopes of another Russian-American prisoner swap and even a meeting between the two presidents. And when the memorandum inevitably comes across Trump’s desk, and he is asked about it during one of his question-and-answer sessions in the Oval Office, the president could react in several different ways, according to Nixey, the Russia expert in London.
“Either he will say, ‘Yes, but look at what the Ukrainians have done to Russia, so this memorandum is unsurprising,” Nixey said. “Or he will say, ‘Putin is not playing ball. This hasn’t turned out like I thought it would. I’m washing my hands of the whole thing.”
Keir Simmons reported from Dubai and Alexander Smith reported from London.
